The people's advocate of old Montevideo, a disappearing section of Uruguay's capital city where bars, cafes and cinemas once crowded the narrow cobbled streets that lead down to the city's port. There, the nation's writers and artists enjoyed a sluggish sense of time held in suspense in this "Switzerland of Latin America", with its own modest version of the welfare state and a per capita income on a level with Ireland.
The old city has since retreated under assault from condominiums and international banks, dug in to just a handful of streets and parks, while the welfare state crumbles rapidly before the implacable assault of neoliberalism, Latin America's term for free market economics.
Uruguay's top writer, Eduardo Galeano, a chainsmoking bohemian and anti-intellectual, is working flat out to preserve memory and hope in times of consumer frenzy, "where things buy people" and loneliness is everywhere.
"I try to live time and not treat it like a commodity," said Galeano, who walks for hours each day, travels widely and enjoys idle hours spent in conversation.
Galeano rose to prominence with his Open Veins of LatinAmerica, (1973), a classic volume outlining the "extent of the continent's solitude," as noted by nobel prizewinner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Galeano is a slim, balding and intense 57-year-old, who dispatches from the Cafe Brasilero, where he sits opposite me, anxious to clear something up.
"Is is true that [Tony] Blair has caused a scandal in Britain by promising a minimum wage?" It appears so. "Incredible, " he responded, "a minimum wage has been fought and won in Central America and Haiti, how can England not have one?"
Galeano ordered a coffee, lit up a smoke and reached into his shirt pocket, withdrawing a tiny notebook, smaller than a matchbox. "It's the biggest of all my notebooks," he said.
The writer, who works "when my hand tickles me," jots down words which grow into tales and then volumes revealing the paradoxes of the modern age. "You read the paper in the morning and think to yourself this can't be true, this has to be false, because if it isn't the world is one madhouse."
Galeano's mind shifted to recent US legislation permitting teenagers to be treated like adults in the penal system and Israel's public defence of torture. "Only moderate physical pressure," I corrected him.
"Moderate physical pressure means torture for the Palestinians," said Galeano, "Israel publicly defends the use of torture, when its abolition was a formal conquest of the western world at the beginning of the century. Everyone knows that torture is still used all over, but for someone to come out and defend it is a sign of the times. Up until now, language cultivated hypocrisy, a tax paid by vice to virtue."
The conversation turned back to Latin America, where the dictators of yesteryear have become the democrats of today. Argentinian Gen Bussi, responsible for at least 600 deaths during military rule (1976-83), was elected governor of Tucuman province, while Gen Hugo Banzer was elected president of Bolivia last month, despite the 300 deaths and 7,000 arrests during his dictatorship in the 1970s.
"Bussi and Banzer are just local examples of a sad universal phenomenon, of a world which values security above justice."
Galeano's work weaves poetry, prose, statistics and fiction to articulate the tortured history of the region. Exiled to Argentina, then Brazil, and finally Cuba, during the era of the region's dictators, Galeano respects and admires those who risk their lives to put an end to repressive regimes.
Galeano was "indignant and shocked" at the bloody end to the hostage crisis in Lima, Peru, when Tupac Amaru rebels were gunned down on the orders of president Fujimori after a three-month siege.
"Fujimori assaulted the legislative and judicial power and was rewarded with re-election," said Galeano. "The rebels occupied an embassy, something less serious, yet Fujimori enjoyed the luxury of that Buffalo Bill and the indians sideshow. The bloodshed was applauded by the people and his popularity doubled."
Nowadays, suggested the writer, "social contradictions are expressed through the crime pages of the newspaper," explaining the success of populist politicians "who make security their battle horse against urban crime, the most feared end-ofcentury phenomenon."
Galeano is an incessant traveller, finding unlimited "raw material" in his trips abroad. Just back from Haiti, the region's poorest country, he is enthused by what he saw.
"It's an incredible country, with a remarkable creative capacity. No one has water but everyone is clean, no one has work but everyone is busy. The history of Haiti is the history of western racism, of a nation punished for the sin of being black and for giving Napoleon Bonaparte a terrible hiding, something the West never forgave."
Haiti, once a rich nation, which expelled its slave-owners and declared the first independent black republic, (1804), was punished by an economic blockade and reparations payments that permanently destroyed its productive capacity.
Galeano's work focuses on the individual as a source of strength and collective hope, forging links that survive even in the worst of times.
On one occasion the writer-activist was collecting signatures for a plebiscite against the privatisation of Uruguay's state industries. "What guarantee do I have that this won't be used against me in the future?" asked one man, worried that a future regime might punish today's dissidents.
"You have no guarantee and it probably will be used against you," responded Galeano. The man signed up anyway, grateful for the honest response.
"We have a long tradition of democracy," explained Galeano. In Uruguay, a plebiscite can be called if 20 per cent of the population, or 600,000 people, sign a petition. Galeano explained how the nation's Left-wing Broad Front forced a referendum on the issue of privatisation of strategic state industries, which was carried by 73 per cent of the population.
"The government had no choice but to buy back the companies that had been sold off," said Galeano, a contented smile on his face.
The role of the bureaucrat and the petty rules enforced within the prisons of the region's dictatorships have always fascinated Galeano.
In his Book Of Embraces, the writer explained how a political prisoner was given five days' solitary for breaking a rule that demanded that all prisoners walk with their two hands behind their backs. "The prisoner had only one arm," explained Galeano. On another occasion inside Uruguay's main prison, one prisoner, "his head shaved like all the others" was punished for "entering the kitchen with his hair uncombed".
Galeano's words fuel hope in times of desperation as state violence, unemployment, insecurity and crime have left the population traumatised.
"There's no doubt that we're living in times of stupor and confusion," agreed Galeano. "Throughout this century there have been many attempts to change the system and these experiences have run aground. Nowadays it's fashionable to climb down from hope as if it were a weary horse, as if one couldn't continue believing that there are alternatives to the market economy."
Galeano sees hope in the region's growing popular movement, in Mexico's huge debtors' organisation, Brazil's Landless Movement and indigenous Zapatista rebels in Mexico who challenge global economics.
"I write for people who can't read my books," concluded Galeano, on the paradox of high book prices that prohibit wide readership. "Nowadays it's the price not the police that prevent my books from being read."
At the end of the interview, Galeano insisted on paying for the coffees, adding them to his open tab in the cafe. At the corner he disappeared into the traffic, as craned necks and furtive digs in the ribs confirmed this writer's popular status, a passionate Quixote fighting his own war against forgetting.